


Imprints

by missmungoe



Category: One Piece
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship/Love, Scars, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 07:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9373268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmungoe/pseuds/missmungoe
Summary: Scars often tell only half the story.





	

The first time he sees the mark on her back it’s by accident.

Eyes on the newspaper in his hands, he’d opened the door without knocking, and hadn’t noticed that anything was off until he’d raised his eyes to find her in the process of pulling her shirt over her head, elbows akimbo and her hair in happy disarray.

But there she was, back turned to him, most of her torso bared and the shift of her muscles under her skin locking his heels to the floor, forcing him to a staggering stop in the doorway.

And in the middle of her back, bright and red and drawing his gaze like a bull’s eye—

He’d been too busy staring to notice her turn around; to even make note of the fact that she still had her shirt halfway off, but he caught the startled flash in her eyes that was only there a moment before her face contorted into a familiar expression of outrage.

She clocked him, and he sported a bruise for two solid weeks. And he barely even remembered what the mark had looked like, sitting like a blurry red spot in his mind. No, what he remembered was her eyes; that brief slip in her cheerful composure, a burst of emotion almost too quick to catch, but the memory of it stayed with him longer than the bruise.

 

—

 

The second time he sees it, it’s out of necessity.

He was dragged out of sleep by the ground shaking,  _shifting_  under his feet, like the earth itself had split in half, and he’d tumbled off the mattress off his bunk before he’d had the chance to come properly awake. And he’d barely had time to grab his clothes and sprint for the door before the whole base was coming down around him.

Fighting greeted him when he made it outside, and there was no explanation to be offered, only a cacophony of shouting and screaming, and it had taken him a moment of simply staring at the chaos before he’d been able to force his body into responding—into  _acting_.

He found his answer shortly after, along with a fallen comrade, lips bloodied and eyes fluttering, but—“ _Blackbeard_ ,” the name was offered, a hoarse, ragged croak, and even before the last breath had shuddered out of him Sabo had gone cold all over, no familiar fire in his gut or his veins now, only a chill that cut straight to the bone.

It took him a moment to gather himself enough to proceed, to figure out  _how_  to proceed, eyes stinging from the smoke, and too many people clashing around him to know where to turn. And the whole island seemed to be  _tilting_ , which made staying on his feet a challenge, but he managed, pushing through the chaos, restless fingers seeking familiar metal, but he’d left his weapon in his room. And even though he wanted to fight, there was a more urgent knowledge pressing against his skull, watching the ground crumble under his feet.

This wasn’t a battle they could win today. Which left only one option, really.

Thinking back, he couldn’t quite remember, between the tumult and the fighting, just how they made it off the island. But it was Dragon’s doing, an ease to his commands entirely at odds with the grave fury pulling at his features, and for all his years of training, Sabo had never felt so clumsy, too busy searching the throng of people trying to escape, looking for faces he knew, to make sure they were still alive. A stupid thing to do, for a second-in-command—a rookie mistake, but without her at his elbow and no sign of her wherever he turned his head—

A hand on his elbow then, and Koala had materialised beside him, cheeks smudged with soot and her hat missing. And he hadn’t caught what she’d said, too busy dealing with the sheer  _relief_  of finding her, but when she’d tugged at his arm he’d followed. And then Hack had been there, and others he’d lost sight of in the chaos, and Dragon’s ship, tilting in churning waters as the ground ripped apart under their feet.

They’d vanished under the cover of night, chased by that uncanny darkness that draped like a shroud over what had for so many years been the only home he’d ever known; the only one he’d  _remembered_. And he’d been so busy staring at the bloody horizon as they cut through the waters to safety, he hadn’t noticed that Koala had disappeared from his side.

He’d discarded his coat, and the smell of gunpowder clung to his nose, his shirt and trousers—and  _blood_ , too, the odour ripe and pungent. And the thought crept in, through the chaos of his mind, that he had no bleeding wounds.

That was when he noticed the small, bloody handprint on his shirt, sitting close to his elbow.

He was tearing across the deck before the realisation had had time to properly settle, feet taking him belowdecks to the crew’s quarters. And he didn’t know how he knew just which one to choose, but then his hand was on the doorknob, and ripping open the door it was to find her sitting hunched over one of the bunks, a bloodied bundle of cloth pressed to a bleeding wound on her back, almost out of her reach.

“Koala!”

She inclined her head to find him in the doorway, but unlike the day he’d unintentionally walked in on her changing she didn’t react with outrage; in fact, she seemed too preoccupied with the wound to bother with her state of undress—or her back, fully exposed now, sunburst mark and all.

And for the span of a single breath Sabo stood rooted to the spot, before he was pushing inside, closing the door behind him and covering the length of the cabin in two long strides. But she didn’t flinch when he reached out to take the blood-soaked bundle, allowing her hand to drop instead, no protest offered, although he watched the tense coil of her muscles as he gingerly pulled the cloth away.

It was a deep gouge, running diagonally from one shoulder to the shoulder blade opposite, and for a moment all he could do was stare.

“Falling debris,” she said then, by way of explanation, and he heard the tight quality of her voice. “How bad does it look? I couldn’t—I couldn’t reach all of it.” She breathed through her nose, and he had a mind to ask if she was in pain, but swallowed the question, finding the answer written in the tight clench of her muscles.

He didn’t reach out to touch it. It was deep, enough to need stitches, and several; that he was sure of, and he told her as much.

He heard her suck in a breath, and before she could speak he said, “Do you want me to get—”

“No,” she cut him off, the lone word clipped. “No, just—” But whatever she’d been about to say dissolved in a hiss of pain, and Sabo watched the partially clotted blood yield to a fresh flow, running red pathways down the length of her back.

“There’s a—a med-kit,” Koala said then, and she was trying to keep her breathing even, but he caught the quaver in her voice. “Could you—”

She didn’t finish, but he was already moving, discarding the bloodied cloth and his gloves, before rooting through the chest sitting against the wall opposite until he found the kit. And then he was making his way back towards the bunk, trying to remember every crash-course he’d ever sat through about field dressings and first aid. But even if he could manage his own petty wounds without much trouble, his hands hesitated now, the bare expanse of her back at his fingertips and her trust implicit.

He set about cleaning the cut first, forcibly dragging his reeling thoughts into a single point of focus, far away from Blackbeard and the events of the night, until he’d regained control of his breathing and his hands were no longer shaking.

Koala had discarded her shirt on the mattress beside her, but he didn’t look at the blood soaking through the fabric, the pink bleeding an ugly brown. He hadn’t even noticed that she’d been injured, and the thought sat now like a tightly coiled knot at the base of his ribcage.

There were no painkillers to be found, the med-kit rudimentary at best, and so, “This might hurt,” he said, tone apologetic, and he watched the muscles in her shoulders tense, before she nodded once, the gesture sharp and accepting.

He’d stitched a cut on his own arm once, one-handed; a hasty, sloppily done thing, and he still had a weird scar from it, but he hadn’t really thought about it much. Not like he did now, gaze focused on the gouge in her back and the needle held between his fingers. This would scar; a cut as deep as that would leave a mark even at the hands of a skilled medic, but knowing that it could be done better left a bitter taste on his tongue, even as he set about stitching it, movements as careful and deliberate as he could manage.

He didn’t look at the mark sitting beneath—that red sun, bleeding now like the wound above, but it sat just in the path of his downturned gaze, curiously beckoning; a bloody shadow at the edge of his vision.

“Describe it to me,” Koala said then, and Sabo paused in his ministrations.

“What?”

She drew a deep breath. He watched the rise of her back, before it fell, the curve of her bared shoulders sinking along with her exhale. And she didn’t specify what she meant; if she was talking about the wound or the mark, but he felt like he knew. “Just tell me what you see, because I know you’re looking. It’ll distract me from the fact that you’re shoving a needle through my skin.”

She was looking at the wall, her face turned away from him, and so he couldn’t see her expression. And he considered her where she sat, her legs tucked beneath her and her back bent under his hands. It would take a good deal more than a few stitches before he was finished, Sabo knew.

Then, swallowing, “It looks like a sun,” he said, as he continued his stitching. “A red sun,” he added at length. And he knew the mark, of course; most people on this sea did, but Sabo figured she had her reasons for asking, and that it had little to do with the pain.

“How big is it?”

He glanced at the mark. “Not very big. I could probably cover most of it with my hand.”

He didn’t, although the urge was a sudden, curiously tempting thing.

She hummed, the sound sitting low in her throat. “I can’t really reach it,” she said then. “Or, the angle is awkward if I try. And I can’t really  _feel_  it, not—not physically, at least.”

Sabo said nothing to that, eyes locked on his row of stitches. And they hadn’t talked about this. Odd, maybe, for two people who told each other everything else. They’d both lived lives before joining the Revolutionaries, and even if he’d only recently remembered what his had been like, they’d rarely broached the particulars of the subject. Of course, there was usually an implicit rule among them all not to ask. Not everyone wanted to remember the lives they’d had before their joining. In many ways, Sabo knew his amnesia might be envied, by those who’d rather forget and start over.

He’d never asked her, if she wanted to forget. He knew the story. She’d told it to him years ago, although he knew there were things she’d kept to herself. And that was her prerogative—that was anyone’s prerogative, who’d lived through hell, to describe it with whatever words they wanted.

But the human body often kept things, ugly secrets and painful reminders that didn’t need putting into words, but that were often all the worse for it.

“Sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s there, or that it is what it is,” Koala continued then, when a lull had passed. “That it’s a sun, not a—not something else,” she added. “You can’t see what it used to be, but I can still feel it, sometimes. The other mark. The one that’s underneath.”

The urge grabbed him, suddenly unavoidable, and before he could think the better of it he let his thumb sketch the edge of the sun, the outer ridge of the embellished sun-rays wrapping around a single circle. He felt her shiver, and didn’t know if it was because he’d caught her by surprise or something else entirely, but, “I only see a sun,” he said.

Then, letting his hand drop, “And I see you,” he added. He tried for a smile, even knowing she couldn’t see it. “Sun or no sun.”

He heard her laugh as it shuddered out of her; felt it, in the way her back sank under his touch. “Is that how you feel when you look in the mirror?” she asked. “Do you see yourself?”

Sabo let a rueful smile touch his lips. “I don’t look in the mirror a lot.”

“But when you do?”

He paused, fingertips just out of reach of the mark now, and barely touching her skin. He watched her breathing, gaze sketching the dip of her spine towards her lower back. There were more scars, small ones, gathered over the course of a life spent fighting with fists; silver-pale marks, and some, still pink and healing. But the sun still sat, the brightest of all, and the years would never heal that, he knew. Not fully.

“There was a long time I didn’t know who I was,” he said at length. “Then I remembered, and—well, it wasn’t really any easier. But I guess I am…me, even with the scar.”

“Not because of it?”

He paused, brows furrowing, but when he opened his mouth to respond he found he couldn’t find his words.

“You told me,” Koala said then. “When you got your memory back, you told me how you got it. Or, the things leading up to it, anyway.” She paused. “The people who were responsible…they’re the ones we’re fighting. The scar is part of who you are now, and what you’re fighting for. Who you became, even when you couldn’t remember who you were before.”

She still had her face turned away, and the needle sat, idle between slack fingers. “I—yeah,” he said. “I guess I haven’t really thought about it like that.”

She made a noise, like a hum but not quite. “I try to,” she said. “I like to think that in doing it…who I am now feels more like a victory, than just a consequence. But it’s still difficult,” she said then, and her voice was quieter now. “Isn’t it?”

Sabo felt his sigh held more words than what he said, but, “Yeah,” he murmured, fiddling with the needle. And there was more to be said, he knew, more that  _should_  be said, maybe; that they were more than whatever scars or brands they bore, but those were usually words offered by people who had none of their own. It wasn’t always so easy to remember, when you could barely look at yourself in the mirror without wanting to turn your eyes away.

He finished stitching the cut in silence, and Koala didn’t say anything else as he set about wrapping it, mindful of how he tightened the bandage, and the fact that she was still partially undressed. But the small gestures were comfortable things—familiar, between two souls who’d seen different hells but who understood each other regardless.

“Sabo-kun,” she said then, when he’d let his hands drop. There was blood on his fingers and the sleeves of his shirt, but the bandage was clean; the stitches held. She hadn’t reached for her own shirt, but then he doubted she’d want to wear it, considering what it looked like. “Thank you.”

He felt his smile, a soft thing. “For what?”

She turned now, meeting his eyes, and her smile was familiar. “For not botching the job of stitching up my back.”

“You can’t see it. For all you know I’ve stitched my initials into your skin.”

She pinched his thigh, and a laugh pulled from his chest, along with a yelp. “ _Ow_!”

She let her hand rest against the mattress, and he felt the touch of it against his knee, but didn’t reach out to take it. It seemed too much, somehow; as though they’d already toed a fragile balance tonight, and he wasn’t about to violently tip the scales by doing something impulsive. Even if the thought arose from somewhere within him that she probably wouldn’t have been surprised if he did, given his track record.

“Hey,” Koala said then, quietly. “Will we be alright? After tonight—”

She didn’t finish, but he knew what she was saying. And the words were sobering, and enough so that he felt his smile drop. He could feel the movements of the ship beneath them, and wondered for a moment where they were, how far they’d gotten in their escape, and how many they’d managed to get off the island in time. How many had they lost?

How much of it was his fault, for antagonising Blackbeard in the first place?

And allowing his gaze to glance off the bandage wrapped around her torso, Sabo felt the sinking realisation that it could have been worse— _much_ worse, more than falling debris and a hairsbreadth escape. Had they really grown so complacent with the place they held in the balance of the world powers, that they’d been unprepared for the wrath of a single pirate? What did that mean, for an organisation that sought to tip the scales of the whole  _world_?

“I don’t know,” he said at length, because he didn’t know what else to say.

He looked at her mark now, sitting bold against her skin, the top of it obscured by the edge of the bandage. But he didn’t reach out to touch it, to lay his hand against it, not to cover it up but to  _feel_  it, the ridges and the protrusions, and every ounce of meaning the symbol held, at least to those who saw it for what it was, not what it had once been.

 _Freedom_ , he thought, and drew some strength from the fact. And he didn’t ask her, or even wonder out loud, if that was the word that came to mind when she looked at his face; didn’t dare to question if she looked at the thick scar tissue distorting his features and saw what they were fighting for.

Or if she saw instead what they fought against—a far uglier truth, and the scar all the uglier for it.

 

—

 

The next time, Koala is the one who sees.

He’d been so caught up in his training, mind entirely focused on executing the familiar movements, his breathing sitting heavy and even in his chest and fire lapping against his fingertips, anger driving him towards exhaustion.

He’d been useless, that night they’d lost Baltigo—had barely been able to escape with his tail tucked between his legs. With all the power entrusted to him, his devil fruit and his position, all he’d done was run. And he let it drive him now, the knowledge that he couldn’t let it happen again— _wouldn’t_ , not with his brother’s fruit; not with Ace’s legacy in his possession. He wouldn’t lose to Blackbeard again, even indirectly. If he did—

Turning on his heel, palm thrust outward and the muscles in his arm contracting, Sabo was brought up short by the sight of her, standing just a few feet away.

And he was so caught off guard by her presence that he missed his next step, the result being an awkward half-bounce, before he caught himself. And there was a laugh in his chest; a startled, breathless gust, and he was about to tell her not to sneak up on people when he noticed where her gaze rested, and the distinct absence of the smile he’d expected.

And it only took him a moment to realise where he was, and what he’d been doing—that he’d tied his hair back because it had gotten so long it was starting to become a hassle, and he only did it when he was sure there was no one else around because it left his face exposed, and the burn scar—

He felt his hand twitch against his side, and he meant to say—something. Or maybe he felt like reaching up to pull his hair loose of its cord, just to feel it against his face, because under the weight of her eyes like this it was the most naked he’d ever felt.

Then her expression softened, and he recognised the slight purse to her mouth, the one that was usually followed by a  _mou_ , and a lecture about not acting like such an idiot. But there was something else there as well, a keen understanding that even her fond annoyance couldn’t quite cover up. That, or she wasn’t trying to conceal it.

And remembering her eyes from the day he’d walked in on her all those months ago, Sabo wondered idly what she found in his now.

“Stupid,” she told him then, gently. “You’d think I caught you with your pants around your ankles.”

Despite himself, that drew a laugh, but it felt strained even to his own ears. “Feels a little bit like it,” he said with a shrug, rubbing the back of his neck. The temptation was still present, to pull the cord loose, but he only let his fingertips brush against it, before letting them drop.

Koala’s smile lifted, just a little. “You could always drop them, if it would help.”

His own followed suit, entirely of its own accord. “I really don’t think it would.”

Her smile widened, and he allowed some of the tension to bleed out of his shoulders. And, “I don’t know why I try to hide it,” he said then, a sigh pulling loose. “It’s pretty noticeable either way, so it’s not like there’s much of a point to it.”

Koala hummed. “Growing your hair long is a bit ineffective, yeah. You should wear a mask if you really wanted to hide it.” Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she added, “But I get why you do it.”

Sabo looked up, and she must have found the question on his face because then she shrugged. “You don’t see me running around in open-backed shirts,” she offered, the words meant to be humorous, Sabo thought, although they didn’t quite succeed. But then, “And I’d look pretty good in an open-backed shirt,” she added.

He stopped himself just in time to offer his agreement, and watched her cheeks puff up, and, “This is where you’re supposed to agree, Sabo-kun,” Koala said, although the gleam in her eyes betrayed her attempted irritation.

He laughed. “Ah. Yeah—you would.” And remembering quite vividly what her back looked like, he hoped she couldn’t see just how hot his cheeks suddenly felt.

“Now you just sound like you’re agreeing with me just for the sake of agreeing,” Koala said, hands on her hips, but the playful edge to her smile told him she was teasing.

And there was a remark at the tip of his tongue— _maybe you should wear one and I’ll tell you what I think—_ but he swallowed it, startled by its sudden appearance, and where it had come from. It almost sounded flirtatious, and they’d never taken that step. Not that far, anyhow. Teasing, yes, but this…

“You’re one of the few,” Koala said then, before he could finish the thought, and Sabo looked up, surprised. “Who’s seen my back,” she added. “I didn’t tell you that before, but you are.”

He considered her where she stood, gaze holding his, and her expression yielding something that, for once, he couldn’t read.

But, “Yeah?” he asked, and it felt significant, somehow, that he ask. Like an invitation, although he wasn’t about to let himself go far down the path towards where that might lead, aware that there was a precarious balance at stake, and that  _hope_ was a dangerous thing to hinge your faith on, at least on this sea.

Koala hummed her answer, the sound low and thoughtful. And he felt like she was leading up to something, and he had half a mind to ask her why she’d come looking for him—the fact that she had felt like a curiously certain knowledge, Sabo found, even as he considered the thought that she might just have stumbled upon him by accident.

She took a step toward him then, first one, almost hesitant, but the second held more surety, and with the third his brows had begun to creep towards his hairline. And there was a question on his tongue as to what she was doing, when, lifting up on her toes, she sketched a kiss to his cheek, against the scar tissue just beneath his eye.

And for a moment he was too startled to move—to respond, or do anything that resembled a reaction.

Then she turned her head, still balancing on the tips of her toes, and before his mind had the chance to catch up with her first kiss she’d pulled him down for another, small hands cupping his face and her nose nudged against his, and the slant of her mouth carefully insistent, along with the rest of her, pressed up against him.

She tasted like that weird fruit they’d had for breakfast, and her hair was soft where it slipped through his fingers. And there was a stray thought that he was glad he’d discarded his gloves earlier, even as it took him a moment to realise he’d reached up to curl his fingers around the back of her neck, his response so automatic his mind was still struggling to catch up.

When she drew back, her smile was an entirely new thing, and, “You should wear your hair up more often,” she said, laugh a little breathless, and when she sank back on her heels Sabo thought he could at the very least have managed a comeback.

But before he could gather his wits enough to say anything Koala had spun on her heel, a slight skip in her step as she made to leave, although he caught the corner of her mouth lifting before she’d turned away—a smile that seemed almost startled it was so genuine; nothing at all like her usual, cheerful smiles which sometimes seemed so practised he often wondered how much of it was muscle memory and how much was true joy.

It took him a moment to come back to himself, and when he did she was gone. The sweat from his training had dried, his heightened body temperature having seen to that, and it was an effort to remember what he’d been doing before she’d showed up.

There was a thought—that Ace would have laughed himself into a narcoleptic coma if he’d seen how spectacularly he’d botched that encounter. And Sabo might have smiled at the thought, if he still hadn’t been so busy trying to wrap his mind around what had happened.

But he felt his own smile then, an entirely ridiculous thing, and he probably should feel like an idiot, grinning into thin air. But the soft press of her lips lingered, and he felt suddenly like  _laughing,_  and glad there was no one else around, even as part of him felt like running after her, to catch her hand and tug her towards him, and to kiss her again.

He didn’t get any more training done. He also forgot his shirt, and his coat—and his gloves, all of which he realised were missing well over halfway down the route back to the place that served as their new base. But he couldn’t be bothered to go back and get them, his state of dress seeming suddenly, entirely meaningless, and his grin hard to remove.

But the most noticeable thing by far—which he might have realised, if he’d had half a mind with him—was his hair, which he’d completely forgotten to take down.

 

— 

 

The next time he sees the mark on her back, it’s because she invites him.

 


End file.
